#war for spanish succession

[stumbling-towards-the-light]

Historically speaking, families that practiced incest, at least to a larger degree than other cultures, also gave women more rights. The reason the Habsburgs married niece-to-uncle all the time was because their inheritance customs dictated that property and titles could pass through the eldest daughter's line to her eldest son. So, in order to keep their empire in the hands of the Habsburgs instead of the French or the English, they married their daughters to Habsburg cousins. The one time this rule was not followed, it sparked a civil war where the Habsburgs were ousted from the Spanish throne because the Spanish king had not married his Habsburg daughter to another Habsburg. Ditto for the Egyptian dynasties where women generally had a larger say in political/cultural/domestic life than their European counterparts. Cleopatra was not the only female Pharoah to kick ass. All of this to say, the Valyrian Freehold and the Targaryens, by extension, most likely gave their women some stake in property rights and/or inheritance policies. Why else would it be traditional for Aegon to marry his oldest sister if custom dictated he only had to marry one? Why else would it even be a debate for Laenor to inherit the Iron Throne through his mother?

[bantarleton]

The uniform of a senior French general, captured at the battle of Blenheim in 1704 and now forming part of the exhibition at the National Army Museum.

[useless-catalanfacts]

View of an arch in the patio's staircase, one of the rooms, and a relied representing Neptune in Palau Dalmases (palace of the Dalmases family) in Barcelona, Catalonia.

The house has its origins in the 14th century and was remodelled in the following centuries to make it bigger. It was mostly destroyed as a result of the French army bombing Barcelona in 1697 (second siege of Barcelona in the Nine Years War), and so the owners sold the ruins to Pau Dalmases Castells i Ros. In the early 1700s, it was rebuilt almost from scratch in a Baroque style.

Pau Dalmases's son, Pau Ignasi de Dalmases, was an influential intellectual of the time. In this house, in the year 1700, he founded the Academy of the Distrusting (Acadèmia dels Desconfiats, in Catalan), a society that encouraged studying Catalan history, language and poetry, which was joined by many important intellectuals of the time. The society published poetry books, but had to stop their meeting in 1703 because of the War of the Spanish Succession. After the end of the war in 1714, when Catalonia was occupied by Castilla (Spain) and the King of Spain Philip V abolished all Catalan institutions, laws, forbid using the Catalan language in official settings, and hugely repressed the Catalan language and culture as well as everyone who had fought on Catalonia's side in the war (as was the case for most members of the Academy of the Distrusting), the academy was forced to close.

Photos by Bob Masters for Calaix. Information from Inventari del Patrimoni Arquitectònic de Catalunya.

[courseyoulovemeyoudontknowme]

The Favourite (2018, Yorgos Lanthimos)

19/12/2024

[rnsulentic]

Rebasing fun. Austrian regiment Alt-Starhemberg. 15mm Dixon miniatures painted in the 1990s getting a new purpose.

[skitskatdacat63]

I finally asked my prof who his fav Habsburg is and he was SO delighted 😭 I told him I've been researching and he was like "on your own???" 🤭🤭

[ellavei]

Spain: Someone please pour me more wine.

Servant: Your wedding with Señor Francia starts in the next hour, my Lord...

Spain: More reasons to drink more wine.

[master-of-the-opera-house]

also, what songs remind you of franz? a song that reminds me of sophie is "die first" by nessa barrett.

Oh..... oh........... Yeah you're right. Interestingly I also thought of 'Dyin Aint So Bad' for Sophie theatre kid moment which has a similar theme, and for Franzi I've already given a song here !! But as mentioned I have a whole playlist and another song that reminds me of him is My Tears Ricochet!

And speaking of Taylor Swift ((and your other ask)) I do indeed have The Great War on said playlist as well! I think it's just as much Franzi and Sopherl too.

[valkyries-things]

CHRISTIAN DAVIES // SOLDIER

“She was an Irishwoman who joined the British Army in 1693 disguised as a man. She fought with the infantry in Flanders during the Nine Years War until 1697, then with the 4th Dragoons, later the 2nd Royal North British Dragoons and finally with the Scots Greys in the War of the Spanish Succession from 1701 to 1706. The author Daniel Defoe met her in old age when she was a Chelsea Pensioner and turned her story into a book entitled The Life and Adventures of Mrs. Christian Davies.”

[bantarleton]

French assault columns storming the Dutch breastworks at the battle of Denain, 24 July 1712, by Giuseppe Rava. Love seeing historical artwork that shows a “big picture,” reminds me of the endless stick-men battle scenes I’d doodle as a kid (albeit this looks much better!).

[useless-catalanfacts]

El Canyeret neighbourhood in the city of Lleida (capital city of Ponent, Catalonia) devastated after being bombed by Mussolini’s Italian fascist aviation, who was helping Franco and his fascist side in the Spanish Civil War.

Photo source: Arxiu Comarcal del Segrià.

Lleida was bombed many times by the fascist air-force in the Spanish Civil War, most heavily during the days known as “the Battle of Lleida”, between March 27th and April 3rd 1938, which ended in a victory of the fascist side. Lleida was not a big city nor very strategically important -the fascists’ aim was not factories or weapons, but civilians. Lleida’s importance was as a symbol: the rest of Catalonia still resisted as an antifascist stronghold, thanks to the militia organizations that many civilians had joined; but Lleida, as Catalonia’s Westernmost city (and thus the one closest to Spain where Franco’s army already controlled most territory), was the first city in Catalonia that was occupied by the fascist troops. (Remember that one of the main pillars of Spanish fascism are Catalanophobia and Spanish supremacy, and hatred of leftists and atheists, who were also identified with Catalonia because workers’ leftist movements were very strong here.)

The alliance between the Italian aviation, Franco’s Spanish troops and Moroccan troops occupied Lleida for the fascists, and most of the city’s population was either killed or fled as refugees to other parts of Catalonia still under control of the Republic. Out of the 38,000 inhabitants that the city had before the Battle of Lleida, less than 2,000 were left in the city on the day that the fascists considered they had bombed it enough and occupied it by land.

As soon as the fascists took control of the city, they went to erase the official registres of the victims of war, trying to erase responsibility for their massacre. They went to the Civil Registre to take the books of deaths, where the names and dates of the people who died in the city showed how many had been killed by the fascist bombs. The fascists always tried to obfuscate their crimes, they never had any honour even to face their own deeds.

By the way, the neighbourhood shown in the photo (El Canyeret) was home to the descendants of the families that Spanish troops had already destroyed 200 years ago. When Castilla (Spain) first occupied Catalonia, in the year 1714 as the end of the War of the Spanish Succession, the Spanish King Philip V militarized Catalonia, destroying whole neighbourhoods and even whole cities. In the main important cities, including Lleida, the Spanish government destroyed neighbourhoods and built military citadels on its place, that had the cannons always pointing at the population. In Lleida, people were expelled from the slopes of the Seu Vella hill, and the newly-homeless families built shanty towns further down. This was the creation of El Canyeret.

[mourning-again-in-america]

Tried constructing a founding-era equivalent to the cases of al-Nashiri and the 9/11 defendants to try to see if there's a case against them having speedy trial rights but I just got sad instead.

[minetteskvareninova]

I am not on Bluesky and you cannot make me join, but if there was anything that could make me do it, it would be seeing this contrarian bullshit while procrastinating from studying on my Early Modern History exams. Because someone needs to give these historically illiterate morons a reality check.

Listen. I don't *like* Middle Ages. I don't vibe with their art, philosophy, politics, anything. But they existed. They brought something of value to the world. Over the course of the Middle Ages, Europe experienced important societal developments. Without these developments, renaissance literally wouldn't happen. Renaissance was in many ways (art, philosophy, science) a continuation of the Middle Ages, in that there really isn't hard cut between Late Medieval period and the renaissance. In other ways, it was exactly like the Middle Ages AND WORSE. The panic over witchcraft reached its zenith in the 16th and the first half of the 17th century. Lots of unscientific bullshit about medicine, alchemy etc. was still going strong well into the 17th century. In fact, 17th century really was the worst, I'd just despise it with all my heart if it wasn't for a few bright spots like baroque architecture, beginnings of the scientific revolution and the like. And are you seriously calling out medieval Europeans for their silly religious beliefs and tendency for violence when renaissance was THE era of bullshit religious conflicts?! Like, my man! Thirty Years wasn't a medieval thing! Even the thing about "going to war with your cousin" - THAT'S LITERALLY WAR OF SPANISH SUCCESSION WHAT ARE YOU EVEN TALKING ABOUT

I am not even going to talk about the 16th and 17th century on other continents, because in the Americas it was the era of LITERAL APOCALYPSE. Like how can you talk about any progress when that part of the world saw a brutality that would make the crusaders blush.

It sucks that Early Modern Era still effectively doesn't exist in the popular imagination. Its best parts are subsumed into "renaissance" and "enlightenment". Its worst parts are grouped in with the Middle Ages - not the least because they didn't actually improve that much, and in fact got worse a lot of the time. But you cannot celebrate the art of Da Vinci and just ignore the atmosphere of constant warfare between petty duchies it was born in. That's not how historical eras work. In fact, historical eras aren't really discreet categories with a clear cutoff point, but more like approximate divisions of a continuum. There is very little that separates the art of 1599 from 1600, but by 1650, you do kinda start seeing the difference.

Also! I know I keep repeating this, but Middle Ages didn't suck equally throughout their entirety. "Dark Ages" were the Early Medieval Era, which itself was a several centuries long period by most estimates. High Middle Ages were mostly as good as the Middle Ages got, you get gothic architecture, invention of universities, scholastic philosophy, the works. 14th century is when the things really start to suck again, Black Plague comes, you get wars and peasant rebellions, yada yada. But you also get the earliest "renaissance" art, so if you like that style, you can't disavow the Middle Ages entirely. And the 15th century is also mostly bad, except that one is when the renaissance and humanism period begins in earnest, so.

[alexanderwales]

Superheroes make a lot more sense in a world where there's a lot of crime. Not only is there more opportunity for heroism, I think having a work of fiction set during a transitional period is often the best way to go, because then any question about how this is at all sustainable can be answered with a curt "it's not".

One of my favorite reasons for a period of criminality is when there's a big war with a lot of soldiers trained in the arts of violence and warfare, fed and clothed by the state, who then go back to economic inequality once the war is done, having learned everything there is to know about doing violence against other people. This is the explanation that I've always heard for the Golden Age of Piracy, which started in 1713 when the War of Spanish Succession ended and a whole bunch of sailors suddenly had nothing to do with their lives and all the skills necessary to rob ships.

So I've been doing some superhero worldbuilding, trying to get the worst possible crime wave in a world that's at least somewhat like our own, set a few years after the end of a major war in a country that decided not to transition it's soldiers back home, with drug problems, prohibition problems, rampant inequality, and as many other triggers as I can think of.

But I think there's a risk, if you do all that setup, to overshadowing the superheroes. If there's rampant corruption and a major war and income inequality, does it really make that much sense to focus on the fights rather than the root causes?

And I think this is an area where a rough understanding of criminality really hampers me, because I want a reconstruction of superhero stories, and not to dwell too much on why people commit the crimes they do. I do think having a lot of the bank robbers and bandits be ex-military helps in a way though, as it implicates the failures of their government more than having these just be fundamentally bad people that a fundamentally good person needs to stop.

Plus the wake of a major war is a great way to bring in a lot of the superhero kitchen sink, particularly with of technological efforts that were a part of the war.

[skitskatdacat63]

Sorry but I was looking thru asks and I saw these again and they make me laugh every time I look back at them, thank you cofi and c 😭😭😭

I ended up calling it Boy King bcs that's really just how everyone knew it already, but these are all soooo gold

Spanish Dream AU has such great historical context though btw:

I guess sometimes when I tag drawings, I'm like "ah I'm kinda ignoring Nano :<" but then I realize that's the whole point! Yeah he's important and so are others in the au, but Seb is always the most important at the end of the day 🤭🤭